The Socio-Economic Importance of Scientific Research To Canada

The Socio-Economic Importance of Scientific Research to Canada Page 8© David A. Wolfe and Ammon Salterpublicly–funded research and economic growth, there remains a presumption of theinformational properties of basic research. For example, Adams developed a series of industrymeasures of the stock of knowledge by looking at articles in public journals and theemployment of scientists. He found a twenty to thirty year gap in the uptake of scientificpapers (the knowledge stock) to productivity growth, as the number of papers produced byresearchers fell over time. He suggested that the decline in the productivity of scientists andthe subsequent fall in the stock of knowledge (measured by total papers) was related to theSecond World War and speculated that 15 per cent of the economic slowdown in the 1970scould be explained by this earlier decline in the knowledge stock (Adams 1990, p. 699).The evolutionary approach to the economics of publicly–funded research suggests that theinformational view of knowledge substantially undervalues the extent to which knowledge isembodied in specific researchers and the institutional networks within which they conduct theirresearch. It compounds this error by misreading the nature of the innovation process. AsRosenberg states, the information–based view tends to regard scientific knowledge as being“on the shelf, costlessly available to all comers” (1990, p. 165). But this view fails toappreciate the extent to which scientific or technical knowledge requires a substantial capabilityon the part of the user. To paraphrase the OECD, knowledge and information abound, it is thecapacity to use them in meaningful ways that is in scarce supply (1996, 231). Often thiscapacity is expensive or difficult to acquire and maintain (Pavitt 1991, p. 112; Cohen andLevinthal 1989). In an influential survey, Cohen and Levinthal suggest that one cancharacterize the R&D of firms as having two faces: R&D both allows the firms to create newpools of knowledge and it enhances their ability to assimilate and exploit existing knowledge. 5They refer to this second dimension as the firm's absorptive capacity.In many respects, the informational view of scientific research closely parallels the linearmodel of innovation which predominated in studies of technological innovation during thepostwar period. The linear model has its roots in debates in the UK in the 1930s over theappropriate role of science policy. One side stressed the need for autonomy andself–governance on the part of the scientific community in the conduct of scientific research;while the other argued the need for a more targeted and publicly–directed approach toscientific research. The former view was adopted in Vannevar Bush’s famous report toPresident Truman, Science: The Endless Frontier (1945), that established the guidingprinciples for much of postwar US science policy. The linear model conceived of innovation5 In their paper, Cohen and Levinthal refer to information rather than knowledge. We have replaced information with knowledge here to8